When I was a young boy growing up in Oklahoma, one of my favorite pastimes during the summer was digging holes. There wasn’t much to do in the Sooner State in the 1970s, so we had to play in the dirt. It was better than chasing tumbleweeds, which was another Okie pastime for children.
As I placed my shovel in the dirt, I imagined digging as far as I could go. Being a huge fan of Warner Brothers cartoons, I knew Bugs Bunny had once dug a hole all the way to China.
With a bit of luck and a whole lot of determination, I could do the same. By the end of the day, I was confident I would be walking around Tiananmen Square and eating fortune cookies.
However, digging a hole was much harder than Bugs made it look. By nine o’clock in the morning, my determination turned into despair. My journey through the Earth met an old adversary—reality.
By 9:30, I was tired, my hands hurt, and those tumbleweeds kept taunting me. So, I set my shovel down and began the chase, leaving behind a pitiful hole, two feet wide and one-and-a-half feet deep.
Not much of a hole.
Those memories came back to me this week, while I was in Arizona with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship at an Advocacy in Action Retreat. The retreat was centered on Indigenous issues, such as the horrific history of Native American boarding schools and Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW). The week was both informative and heartbreaking, as the group came to grips with how the United States government and the Christian church treated Native Americans.
In addition, the group traveled to Oak Flat, Arizona, located within the Tonto National Forest and on the sacred grounds of the Apache Nation. Henry Muñoz Sr. and Sylvia Delgardo-Barrett (co-chairs of the Concern Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition) met the group. Both are activists trying to prevent the U.S. government and a foreign mining company from destroying the lands and polluting the water supplies.
The Oak Flat mining project is a proposed copper mine, led by Resolution Copper. The project would become one of the most significant mining projects in the United States.
Resolution Copper is co-owned by Rio Tinto and BHP, both British-Australian multinational companies. The mine would become one of the largest in history, excavating the ore body nearly 7,000 feet underground (1.325 miles), utilizing the “block cave mining” method.
Muñoz and Delgado-Barrett believe this mining method will cause irreversible environmental damage. Muñoz pointed out that the project will deplete two major aquifers and require an enormous amount of water, equivalent to the annual water usage of the entire city of Tempe. Additionally, the region is in a 25-year drought.
Another issue the activists brought up was mining tailings, waste generated by the extraction. The project will generate the world’s fourth-largest tailings, resulting in approximately 1.5 billion tons of waste.
The dig will create a two-mile-wide crater, 1,000 feet deep. In a model scaled to the site, the crater’s depth could hold the Eiffel Tower.
To add insult to injury, Oak Flat is sacred to the Apache Nation. For thousands of years, the Apaches have used the site for spiritual practices, including ceremonies for the coming of age of young people. The tribe still uses the site for this ceremony. The federal government’s willingness to let the project move forward is yet another example of how the United States treats Native Americans and ignores tribal sovereignty.
In 1955, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower protected Oak Flat by extending the borders of Tonto National Forest. The act protected Oak Flat from all “forms of appropriation … including mining but not reserved to mineral-leasing laws.”
The act was renewed in 1971 by Republican President Richard Nixon, but created a loophole by adding, “the land cannot be mined under federal ownership, but it can be traded to private holders who won’t be subject to land use restrictions.”
Then, on December 19, 2014, Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake inserted a last-minute amendment to a Defense Spending Bill that included: “Oak Flat would be swapped with private land owned by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton Mining companies.” McCain received a large campaign donation from Rio Tinto, while Flake had previously served as a lobbyist for the company in Namibia. Almost immediately, Apache protesters traveled to Washington, D.C., to protest the law.
Naelyn Pike, a 16-year-old Apache activist and co-leader of the Apache Stronghold coalition, told the Huffington Post: “(The Resolution Copper Mining Proposal is) like taking away a church. But the thing about Oak Flat is it’s worse, because you can rebuild a church. Oak Flat will be completely destroyed and it could never come back.”
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court issued an emergency injunction blocking the transfer of Oak Flat to Rio Tinto and BHP. Resolution Copper Spokesperson Tyson Nansel said in a statement that the court’s decision is “merely a temporary pause so that the court of appeals can consider plaintiffs’ eleventh-hour motions.” President Donald Trump called the efforts against the land exchange for the copper mine “anti-American” in a post on Truth Social on Aug. 19.
The fight to save Oak Flat continues, bringing together Apache leaders and environmentalists. Delgado-Barrett confirmed this to the CBF group, saying “that both the religious and environmental arguments are equally important and must be advanced together.”
Both the mining companies and the activists are hopeful they will prevail, but the outcome is now in the hands of the federal courts. The Supreme Court refused to hear a religious liberty case brought by the Apaches earlier this year. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in dissent that it was a “grievous mistake” not to take up the appeal.
As this story unfolds, Good Faith Media will continue working with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC) to ensure the religious liberty of the Apache people will not be ignored by the U.S. government and the Christian church.
As an Indigenous person (Muscogee citizen), I will not stop fighting for my people, and I refuse to chase any more tumbleweeds. Mother Earth is a gift from our Creator, a Creator who entrusted us to care for her. Therefore, let’s come together for the purpose of protecting the only resource we humans have before it’s too late.
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